THE CHINESE AUTHORITIES HAVE DONE A TERRIBLE JOB OF STIFLING ARTIST AI WEI WEI. SINCE 2009 THEY'VE SHUT DOWN HIS BLOG, DETAINED HIM, KEPT HIM UNDER HOUSE ARREST, BEATEN HIM, CONFISCATED HIS PASSPORT AND TORN DOWN HIS JUST BUILT STUDIO IN SHANGHAI. ALL OF THIS, PREDICTABLY, HAS HELPED CATAPULT HIM TO RENOWN IN THE WEST. PRICES FOR HIS WORKS HAVE SOARED, AND HIS NAME IS RECOGNIZED AS A "DISSIDENT'S" BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HIS ART LOOKS LIKE. LAST TUESDAY, AUTHORITIES CLOSED HIS COMPANY, THE ENTITY THROUGH WICH HE MAKES MOST OF HIS WORK. THEY MIGHT AS WELL HAVE TIMED THE MOVE TO DRAW EVEN MORE ATTENTION TO SUNDAY'S (OCT. 7TH ) OPENING OF AI WEI WEI: "ACCORDING TO WHAT ? " AT THE HIRSHHORN MUSEUM, THE ARTISTS FIRST MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE IN NORTH AMERICA. AI HAS A MAGPIE SENSIBILITY. OPERATING IN SO MANY AREAS - ARCHITECT, FILMMAKER,PHOTOGRAPHER, MAKER OF OBJECTS - HE CAN MAKE ART OUT OF ALMOST ANYTHING. HE PICKS UP IDEAS WHERE HE FINDS THEM: STOCKPILING OLD IRONWOOD AND PREHISTORIC VASES (WICH HE EMBOSSES WITH A COCA-COLA LOGO, A WARHOLIAN GESTURE) , CHANNELING THE SKILLS OF HIS COLLABORATORS, ECHOING THE WORK OF OTHER ARTISTS. (EVEN THE NAME OF HIS SHOW IS A FOUND OBJECT, APPROPRIATED FROM A PAINTING BY JASPER JOHNS.)

We are very happy to participate in the BLACK TIE GALA and CHARITY ART AUCTION for KIDS WITH CANCER FOUNDATION OF VIETNAM and THUY'S DREAM.

We are proud to bring our support to this noble cause as Live art sponsors, with Craig Thomas Gallery.
Paintings of Hà Mạnh Thắng, Phạm Huy Thông , Bertrand Perret, Djoko DS.... would be sold on silent or live auction during this occasion.

Money collected is dedicated to Kids with cancer foundation of Vietnam and Thuy's dream, to supporting cancer research and education, as well as cancer children and their famillies physically, emotionally and financially through the different stages of their battle with cancer.

You could find the Press release about this wonderful event on our website.

In conjunction with the exhibition Venus in Vietnam, the Goethe Institut – Hanoi is organising an art talk formatted as a lively conversation between Nguyen Nghia Cuong, Hanoi-based curator, writer, lecturer, and Salon Natasha Director Natalia Kraevskaia, and curator, critic and lecturer Iola Lenzi. The artist and two curators will have an art conversation about the current exhibition and more broadly the theme of gender and sexuality in Vietnamese and Southeast Asian contemporary art. The panel will open the discussion to the attending public at the end of the art conversation.

Exhibition Venus in Vietnam: Installation and sculptural work by Vu Dan Tan and recent pieces by Nguyen Nghia Cuong focus on female iconography and sexuality. The exhibition compares and contrasts the works of two Hanoi artists a generation apart.

This year marks the third anniversary of Vu Dan Tan’s death. In honor of this extraordinary artist, who is considered one of the leading artists of Vietnam’s post-Doi Moi scene, the Goethe-Institut presents the exhibition Venus in Vietnam, curated by Iola Lenzi in collaboration with Natasha Kraevskaja. The exhibition Venus in Vietnam features works by Vu Dan Tan (1946 -2009), that have never been shown in Vietnam: Delicate cardboard suits and miniature installations of female figures in glass-lidded cigarette boxes. They are representing two important series of Vu Dan Tan’s works, the Venus and Fashion series, the artist worked on over several years until shortly before his death. Some of these sculptures were exhibited in Germany (8th Sculpture Triennial -Triennale Kleinplastik, Fellbach, 2001), and later included in major exhibitions in Japan, Holland and Singapore, but in Vietnam, they were known only to friends and other artists who dropped into “Salon Natasha” while Tan was working on them.

Vu Dan Tan whose multi-media cross-disciplinary practice broke new ground in the 1980s with its conceptual and playful use of found materials, is now recognized as a pioneer of the Vietnamese and Southeast Asian contemporary avant-garde. This exhibition offers access to a facet of his work yet widely unknown in Vietnam.

Nguyen Nghia Cuong (b. 1973), a graduate of Vietnam Fine Arts University, now mid-career, is known for his ironic approach to contemporary reality, dominated by consumerism and brand-culture. In his recent series Beauty High Quality, he continues his investigation of the intersection of popular culture, advertising and consumerism, with life and society.

The present exhibition showcases works focusing on female iconography and sexuality, and these two themes’ expanded meaning in the social and cultural context of late twentieth century-early 21st century Vietnam. Vu Dan Tan’s key works of the last decade, juxtaposed with new works by Nguyen Nghia Cuong, together offer a so far little-explored but art historically relevant perspective on the role played by gender, sexuality and woman in Vietnamese visual art of the turn of the century.

Hirshhorn Presents “Ai Weiwei: According to What?” First North American Survey of Provocative Chinese Artist’s Work

Includes Major New Hirshhorn Acquisition

October 7, 2012 to February 24, 2013

He Xie, 2010 - 3,200 porcelain crabs, Dimensions variable

Straight, 2008–12, Steel rebar (38 tons)

Text taken from the press release from Ai Wei Wei's exhibition "According to What?" (Hirshhorn Museum)

“Ai Weiwei: According to What?” the first North American survey of the work of the foremost figure to emerge from the rapidly expanding Chinese contemporary art scene, is on view at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum Oct. 7 through Feb. 24, 2013. Encompassing sculpture, photography, installation, video and audio work, this full-floor exhibition has been significantly revised and updated from the 2009 version of the show organized by the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo.
It features many works made since 2009, when the Hirshhorn began working with the Mori on the current version of the exhibition, including several that have never been exhibited before.

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. Beijing, 1957) is known for such major projects as “Fairytale,” for which he brought 1,001 Chinese citizens to Documenta 12 in 2007; his collaboration with architects Herzog & de Meuron on the design for the main stadium—the “Bird’s Nest”—for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing; and his installation of 100 million hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2010. He has also garnered attention for embracing the Internet and
social media as active platforms for commentary and art forms in their own right. Throughout his career, he has offered insights into the interrelations between art, society and individual experience and has explored such universal topics as culture, history, politics and tradition. “Ai brings our minds and our very being back to a fundamental way of thinking,” said the exhibition’s curator, Mami Kataoka, chief curator at the Mori Art Museum. “One common thread running through his work is that it forces us to face the basic, existential question of ‘According to what?’” The organizing curators of the Hirshhorn presentation are deputy director and chief curator Kerry Brougher and assistant curator Mika Yoshitake.

“Ai Weiwei: According to What?” will travel to four venues in the U.S. and Canada, but only at the Hirshhorn will the exhibition be accompanied by “Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads,” a monumental 12-part sculptural suite by the artist. Installed around the perimeter of the fountain on the museum’s plaza, the work will also be on view until Feb. 24, 2013. “These exhibitions are highly appropriate to the Hirshhorn’s expanding international engagement and sphere of action,” said Hirshhorn Director Richard Koshalek.

“As the museum approaches its 40th anniversary, this larger outlook pertains not only to exhibitions that go beyond more conventional offerings, but to the curating of public space, significant acquisitions such as ‘Cube Light’ and educational programs that bespeak deep research and thematic content relevant to contemporary life.” Since 2009 Ai has become increasingly known for his outspoken political activism, which takes numerous forms and resulted in his detention in 2011 for 81 days by Chinese authorities. “I’ve experienced dramatic changes in my living and working conditions over the past few years,” Ai has stated, “and this exhibition has been an opportunity to reexamine past work and communicate with audiences from afar. I see it as a stream of activities rather than a fixed entity. It is part of a continual process in self-expression.” (A full version of the statement issued by Ai in April 2012 is available on the Hirshhorn’s website: Ai Statement.) Although Ai began his career in 1979, and in 1980 became a member of The Stars, China’s first group of avant-garde artists, his sensibility developed more fully after he moved to the U.S. in 1981 and engaged with the work of Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns, whose 1964 painting “According to What” provides the title for the current exhibition. Ai’s “New York Photographs” (1983–93) chronicle his years on the periphery of the downtown scene. In 1993 Ai’s father, renowned poet Ai Qing, became ill and his son returned to a swiftly modernizing China. Ai then took up themes that occupy him to this day: the determination of artistic value, the meaning of history to a future-oriented culture, the changing role of traditional craftsmanship, the repurposing of utility into aesthetics and argument.

All of these threads come together in a signature work for the artist, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn” (1995/2009), a photographic triptych documenting Ai’s destruction of a piece of pottery that was venerated precisely because it was made roughly 2,000 years ago. In this and other works in which the artist destroys the old to create the new, such as “Coca-Cola Vase” (2007) and his ongoing series of “Colored Vases,” Ai raises questions about the definition and endurance of cultural value. In his repurposed furniture series, Ai again reimagines existing objects, in this case transforming decorative and utilitarian antiques into contemporary art objects, drawing attention to materials and craftsmanship. For “Grapes” (2010), a number of wooden stools from the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) have been rejoined by artisans into a spiky cluster—seats in, legs out—reaestheticizing objects that might be seen to have outlived their usefulness. “Table with Two Legs on the Wall”
(2008) is a dramatic alteration of another Qing antique. Split in two and rejoined at a right angle, the tabletop is at cross-purposes with itself. Half of it functions as it originally did, being level with the floor. The other half, rising perpendicular to the first, its legs perched against the wall, now serves to keep the structure from toppling over. Many of Ai’s recent works have been the direct result of his concerns about the aftermath and victims of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. “Sichuan Earthquake Photos” (2008– ) offer blunt visual evidence of the damage. Ai has made multiple pieces commemorating the more than 5,000 students who died in poorly constructed schools.

For “Snake Ceiling” (2009), backpacks in a range of sizes, representing children of various ages, are linked into a serpentine form. Ai began an online campaign to collect the name, birth year, gender and class of each of the children after he became frustrated with the government response to the quake. “Names of the Student Earthquake Victims Found by the Citizens’ Investigation” (2008–11) presents these facts in black and white. Running nearly three hours and 45 minutes, “Remembrance” (2010) is an audio recording in which each child’s name is spoken aloud. In this group of works, the artist asks fundamental questions not about the value of artworks and artifacts but about the worth of individual human lives. Ai traveled to Sichuan to witness firsthand the quake’s aftermath. For “Straight” (2008–12), he collected 38 tons of twisted steel rebar from collapsed buildings, much of which was being sold for scrap, and had it straightened and then arranged into an orderly pile with a fissure at its center. Other new works added to the exhibition since its Mori debut include “Surveillance Camera” (2010), in which a piece of technology used to keep an eye on the artist is rendered in marble, both monumentalizing it and rendering it inert, and “He Xie” (2010– ), an installation of more than 3,000 porcelain river crabs. These creatures are significant because the words for “river crab,” “he xie,” are a homophone for the Chinese word for “harmonious” in the Chinese Communist Party slogan “the realization of a harmonious society.” The term “he xie” has become Internet slang used to refer
obliquely to official online censorship. In conjunction with the Hirshhorn’s presentations of Ai’s work, the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery will present “Perspectives: Ai Weiwei” until April 7, 2013. “Ai Weiwei: According to What?” is organized by Kataoka at the Mori Art Museum and by the Hirshhorn. The exhibition is made possible with generous support from André Stockamp and Christopher Tsai, Tsai Capital Corporation; members of the Committee for the Artist’s Voice; the
Holenia Trust Fund, in memory of Joseph H. Hirshhorn; and the Hirshhorn’s Board of Trustees.

To accompany the exhibition, the Hirshhorn, the Mori and Prestel will co-publish a full-color
catalog, including updated essays by Kataoka and art historian Charles Merewether and a recent
interview with the artist, conducted via email by Brougher. In addition to the hardcover trade edition
to be distributed internationally, the catalogue will be produced as a $5 magazine for sale at the
exhibition venues, as well as an e-book, the Hirshhorn’s first. Major support for the catalogue is
provided by The Bui Gallery, Mary Boone Gallery, Haines Gallery, Lisson Gallery and Galerie Urs
Meile, Beijing-Lucerne.

For more informations, click on http://www.hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/home/#collection=tumblr-ai-weiwei-according-to-what

The Bui Gallery is very honored to welcome yesterday two adorable and talented artists from Dijon, the historical and cultural capital of the Burgundy region, Eastern France.

Emma Perrochon and Frédéric Sanchez have come to Hanoi for a 3-month residency at the local of The Bui Art Projects.
And this is not their first time in Vietnam: Frédéric is originally Vietnamese! They had come to Vietnam and started an artistic research on the idea of The Memory of a Journey.

Their taste for voyage has contributed to the realization of a great part of their work. For them, traveling is the best way to learn, to share and to live…